It was an admiral of a great navy returning a call, and hundreds of
bluejackets were peeking out from the superstructure.
"Here he comes--spot me Lord Admiral, fellows!"
"Three ruffles of the drum, three pipes o' the boson's whistle----"
"--six boys an' thirteen guns----"
"--and he swellin' out like an eight-inch sponson comin' over the side,
as if it was himself and not his job the guns are for!"
Young apprentice boys' voices those.
There came an older voice: "You kids talk as if it was in admirals and
at sea alone. And ashore any day are bank presidents, head
floor-walkers, chairmen of reception committees--yes, and bishops of
the church--any of them on their great days stepping high to the
salutations, as if 'twas something they had done, and not the uniform
or the robe or the job they held."
Carlin had a look at the owner of the voice. Later he hunted up
Trench--Lieutenant Trench--and to him he said: "Glory to the man who
can wear his uniform without tempering hot convictions or coining free
speech to the bureaucratic mint! But greater glory to the man who can
divest high office of its shining robes and see only the man beneath.
Who's your big, rangy gunner's mate with the gray-flecked, thick black
hair and what the apprentice boys call go-to-hell eyes?"
"That's easy--Killorin."
"And what's his history?"
"When I first knew him--on the China station--he was stroke of the
ship's racing crew, the best football player I ever saw, and among the
men he had the name of being an all-big-gun ship in a fight. A
medal-of-honor man, too. Later he went in for booze-fighting and
hellraising generally and made a first-class job of that, too. I liked
him--all the officers did--and when I was having my first dreams of the
day when I should be commanding the latest dreadnought, it was
Killorin, settled down and steady, who was to be my chief gunner. I
told him as much one night on watch.
"'A warrant-officer and wear a sword and be called Mister?' says
Killorin. 'And will you tell me, sir, what's being a warrant-officer
and wearing a sword and being called Mister to being all alive when my
youth is still with me?'
"I couldn't tell him; and as we grew more friendly many another
question he asked me in the quiet of the night-watches I couldn't
answer. He could talk the eye out of a Chinese idol himself."
Carlin peered down at Killorin. "Did you ever ask him how--despite the
being all alive and having his youth--he is to-day only a gunner's
mate?"
"And have him, in ten perfectly respectful words, put me back in my
place? I did not--not that I wouldn't like to know."
"I think I half know," said Carlin.
That was in a tropic port. That same night Carlin found it too hot to
sleep below. He rolled off his bunk, had another shower-bath, dressed
lightly, and went on deck, where his friend Trench was on watch.
He patrolled the deck with Trench. The men were sleeping everywhere
around the top deck. The tall form of Killorin rolled out from under
the overhang of a turret and sat up. Trench's walk brought him abreast
of Killorin.
"Pretty hot?" asked Trench.
"It is hot--yes, sir."
"These young lads"--Trench waved a hand toward the stretched-out shapes
all around--"they don't seem to mind it."
"They're young, sir."
"Young? I didn't think there was a tougher man, young or old, in the
navy than you."
"A man's body," said Killorin, "can take comfort atop of a hot galley
stove--or a cold one. A man's mind--'tis not so simply eased."
"Trench," said Carlin, when they had left Killorin, "when I was a boy
there was a great hero in our school. Half the girls I knew carried
his picture on their bureaus. And most of the other half were
suspected of hiding one away. One of those athletic heroes, a husky
Apollo--this Killorin makes me think of him. But suddenly he
disappeared from the middle of his glory."
"Any crime?"
"No, no crime. Wild, but straight. His name was Delaney."
"Killorin's right name," said Trench after a while, "is Delaney."
Carlin left Trench and walked around deck, in and out among the
sleeping forms. Here was one in a hammock, here one on a cot, but
mostly they slept on the bare deck in their blankets. Every odd corner
and open space held them. They were tucked in against hatchways, under
turrets, inboard of boats, outboard of boats, next the smoke-pipes, in
the lee of gypsies, of winches, cook's galley. Everyhow and everywhere
they slept--on their backs, their stomachs, on their sides, curled up
and stretched out. Some whistled, some groaned, some snored, but
mostly they slept like babes.
It was hot, as sometimes it seems to be hotter in the night than ever
it can be in the day, even in the tropics.
A young bluejacket under a cluster of deck-lights tossed, rolled,
tossed, sat up. A restless lad near him also sat up. Between them
they produced the makings and rolled a cigarette. They lit up,
inhaled, began to talk.
"How about Bar Harbor, or Rockport, or some other little place off the
New England coast a night like this, with a cool, fresh breeze sweeping
in from the Atlantic?" asked the first one.
"What's the matter with the little old North River?" said the other,
"or the East River, with the Brooklyn trolleys clangin' and the train
to Coney and a few dollars in your pocket after a visit to the
paymaster? ... And your best girl, o' course," he added after a moment.
They snuffed out their cigarettes and rolled back into their blankets.
Killorin was still sitting up wide awake.
"And your best girl?" repeated Carlin to Killorin.
"Yes," responded Killorin, "as if that didn't go, like an anchor to a
ship, without saying."
"Isn't it always a girl?" said Killorin presently. "Whatever drives
the most of us to whatever it is we do, good or bad beyond the
ordinary, but a woman stowed away somewhere to see what we do at the
time or read of it later?"
The Killorins of the world are not standing and delivering to men they
never saw before; and so it was not that night, nor the next; but on
another hot night, and the ship headed up the Gulf, with the men
sleeping anyhow and everywhere about the deck, that Killorin sat
outboard of the sailing-launch and, looking out over the dark waters,
said:
"Progresso astern and Veracruz ahead--always a port astern and another
ahead, isn't it? And so you knew old Dan Riley that kept the candy
store up home? ... And Mary Riley?" he asked; and, after a while, began
to talk of things that had been.
Lovely Mary Riley! No thought ever I had that girls were made for boys
to notice till I saw you!
Five blocks out of my way from school her father's store was, but four
times I walked past that store window the day after the first time I
saw her, and more than four times many a day later--to see her again.
It was three months before I got courage to go nearer to her. And then
it had to be a night with snow on the ground and sleigh-bells to the
horses, and in the faces of men and women a kinder look and in the
heart of a boy maybe a higher hope than ordinary.
Christmas eve it was and the store all decorated--candy canes, big and
little, hanging among the bright things in the window. There were
other people before me, but she nodded and smiled by way of letting me
know that she saw I was waiting. She nodded in the same smiling way to
a poor child and a rich man of the neighborhood.
"How much for a cane?" I asked when it came my turn, and I that nervous
I exploded it from me.
"Canes?" She turned to the window. They were all prices, but I didn't
hear what she said. I was listening to her voice and trembling as I
listened.
There was a great big brute of a cane, tied with blue ribbons and
hanging from a gas fixture. "How much for that one?" I asked.
"That?" She had violet eyes. She opened them wide at me. "That is
two dollars."
"Let me have it," I said.
Her thin red lips opened up and the little teeth inside them shined out
at me. "But you don't want to be buying that," she said; "we keep that
more for show than to sell."
To this day a thing can come to my mind and be as if it happened before
my eyes. "She thinks I'm one who can't afford to spend two dollars for
that cane, and she's going to stop me," I says to myself. "She thinks
I am a foolish kind who would ruin himself to make a show." If there
had been less truth in what she thought, maybe I would have been less
upset. "I'll take it," I said. "I want it for a Christmas tree for my
little nephew."
There was no nephew, little or big, and no Christmas tree, and that two
dollars was every cent I had to spend for Christmas. But her eyes were
still wide upon me, and I paid and walked out with the cane--without
once turning at the door or peeking through the window in passing, for
fear she would be looking after me, and I wouldn't have her think that
a two-dollar candy cane wasn't what I could buy every day of my life if
it pleased me.
I hoped she would remember me, but took care not to pass the store for
a week again, for fear she would see me and think I was courting her
notice because I had bought the big cane.
I was going to high school then. One Saturday afternoon there came
high-school boys from all that part of the country to compete for
prizes in a great hall near by. I wasn't in them. I liked to run and
jump and put the shot well enough, but to go in training, to have a man
tell me what time to go to bed and what time to get up, and what to eat
and what not to eat, and after a couple of months of that to have to
display yourself before crowds of people--that was like being a
gladiator in the Colosseum I used to read about, and performing for the
pleasure of the mob--patricians and the proletariat alike!
I would spend hours in the alcove of the school library reading of
belted knights in the days of tourneys and crusades--but that was
different. I could see myself addressing the kings of the land and the
queens of the court of beauty, the while the heralds all about were
proclaiming my feats of valor. A knight on a great charger in armor
and helmet, with my lance stuck out before me--never anything less
glorious could I be than that.
But all loyal sons of our school took a ticket for the games. I went
to them; and there I saw Mary Riley waving her banner and cheering a
gangling-legged young fellow that lived in the same street as myself.
No special looks did he have, and no more brains than another, but he
was winning a hurdle race and she was cheering him. And there came
another, the winner of the high jump, and she cheered him, too.
To see a girl you are night and day thinking of--to see and hear her
cheering some one else--! I went in for winning prizes. And when the
season came around I played football. And my picture used to be in the
papers, those same papers saying what a wonder I would be when I went
to college. And all the time I wondering was she seeing the pictures
and reading the words of me.
My people had no money to send me to any college, but from this college
and that came men to explain to me how the money part could be
arranged. And so to college I went. I paid enough attention to my
studies to get by--no great attention did it take--but I paid special
attention to athletics, and before long my picture was sharing space in
the papers with presidents and emperors and the last man to jump off
the Brooklyn Bridge. And is there any surer way to spoil a
nineteen-year-old boy's perspective of life than to keep telling him
that well-developed muscles--whether they be in his back or his legs or
inside his head--will make a great man of him?
I came home from college for the summer. I'd seen Mary a few times
since that Christmas eve, but made no attempt to get acquainted. Maybe
I was too shy. Maybe I was too vain, or overproud--waiting for the day
when I would be of some account, when the notice of neither men nor
women would I have to seek--they would be coming to me.
But pride is a poor food for heart hunger. I went to have a look into
her store on my first night home. I had a wild idea that I would go in
and introduce myself and she would know of me, and maybe I would walk
home with her.
There was a young fellow in a navy uniform--a chief petty officer's
coat and cap--leaning on the counter talking to her, and he had a red
rose in the buttonhole of his uniform coat. By and by, when her father
came to close up the store, the young fellow walked home with her.
Standing on the opposite corner, I watched them pass. It was something
serious they were talking about--no smile to either of them.
I stood on the corner after they had passed for as long as I could
stand it. Then I walked up to where I knew she lived. They were
standing at the steps of her house. It was a quiet street, and the
sound of my footsteps caused them both to turn. The young fellow stood
up straight and strong on the lowest step, but she stepped into the
shadow of the doorway. I saw her eyes looking out on me as I passed.
Her hat was off and there was a red rose in her hair--and none in his
coat.
Some pictures fade quick, some never. The picture of Mary Riley in
that doorway, with his rose in her hair--that hasn't faded yet.
They had been talking before I reached them, but as I passed on I could
feel the silence between them. For many steps after I passed on I
could feel that silence and their eyes following me up the street.
Next day there was an outdoor bazaar for the benefit of some flood
sufferers. There was an athletic programme and I was the star of the
meet, with my picture on the bill-boards.
I went. Surrounding the athletic field and track were tables for the
sale of this thing and that, and behind the tables were women and girls
using every female guile to coax money from men's pockets.
There were big tables and little tables. At one of the little tables
was Mary Riley. Sidewise out of my eyes I saw her, standing atop of a
chair behind the table to look out on the games. When the games were
over and I was dressed up in my street clothes again, I walked over to
her table. My three first-prize cups in their three chamois bags were
carried behind me by a multi-millionaire's son named Twinney. He was
an athletic rooter, with an ambition to be known as the friend of some
prize-ring or football or sprinting champion. In my coat pocket were
two gold prize watches.
Mary Riley was standing behind her table. The young chief petty
officer was there, too--in front of the table. They were auctioning
the last of the things off. With a smile and a word of thanks Mary
would hand over the things as they were bought. But she wasn't taking
in too much money. She was the daughter of a man of no great
importance in the community, and she didn't have the grand articles
that the women at the other tables had. Her little stock was made up
of things that she had begged or made herself.
The auctioneer was a whiskered old man with a great flow of gab. He
holds up a piece of lace--to put on a bureau or a dresser it was--made,
as he put it, by beautiful Miss Riley herself. And she was beautiful!
Violet eyes and blue-black hair, and--I've seen Chinese ivory since
that her face was the color of, only no Chinese ivory that ever would
take on the warmer waves of color as I looked at it.
"How much for this lovely lace cover?" the auctioneer was asking, and
"Two dollars," some one said. And right away the chief petty officer
said "Five!"
I looked at him then--for the first time fairly. He was one of those
quiet-looking, thoughtful kind--of good height, well made and well set
up--maybe twenty-two years old.
There was another chief petty officer with him; and this one began
telling a bystander how that young fellow who'd just bid was Jack
Meagher the gun-captain--the same Meagher, yes, that the papers had
been talking about--who'd dropped from his turret to his handling-room
and in through a fire and shut himself up in a magazine and maybe saved
the ship and the whole crew from being blown up. He'd got burnt,
pretty bad--yes, but was all right now.
"He's got his medal of honor for it, but he's not one to carry it
around and show it," said Meagher's friend.
Meagher was bidding--some one had said six dollars for the lace.
Meagher had said ten, and Mary Riley's violet eyes were glowing. I had
five dollars--no more--in my pocket. But there was Twinney with his
tens-of-thousands allowance in the year. He always carried plenty of
money around with him.
"Twinney," I said, "how much money have you?"
"Oh, a couple of hundred or so," and pulled it out and began to count
it.
"I'll bid on the lace piece," I said, "and you pay for it."
"Ten dollars I'm offered for this lovely piece of lace," the auctioneer
was drooning. "Do I hear----?"
"Twenty," I said.
Meagher looks over at me and a light comes into his eyes. "Forty,"
says Meagher.
"Sixty," I said.
"Eighty," says Meagher.
The fat auctioneer looked from one to the other of us. He had not had
a chance to speak since the bidding was at ten dollars. He was about
to open his mouth now when----
"One hundred dollars!" I said and looked over at Meagher.
Meagher turns to his chum. Before he could speak the chum was emptying
his pockets to him. When he had it all counted--his chum's and his
own----
"Two hundred fifty dollars," he said; "we might as well throw in the
change--two hundred and sixty-five dollars," and laid it down on the
table before Mary Riley.
Gold of angels, but there was class to the way he did it. No
millionaire's money, but the savings of an enlisted man's pay.
I turned to Twinney. "He's through--make out your check for three
hundred and give to me."
"Three hundred dollars," he says, "for that piece of lace! Three
hundred--why, five dollars would be enough for it!"
"Make out your check for three hundred, Twinney, and those cups you've
got and the two watches in my pocket, every medal and cup I've got at
home, my championship gold football--they're yours to keep."
"But three hundred dollars!"
"Yes, and three thousand if I had your money!"
"But what do you want it for?"
"Gr-r-r--!" I snarled, and shoved my spread hand into his face. He
landed on his back ten feet away. The C.P.O. friend of Meagher's
started to smile at me, but before he could get the smile well under
way I wiped it off. He fell where he stood. Meagher looked at me and
I at him.
"That wasn't right," said Meagher.
"I'll make it right," I said, "with you or him or whoever else doesn't
like it, now or later."
He went white; and the kind that go white are finish fighters. And he
was a good big man with more than muscle under his coat.
"Make it right now," he said. "But not here--some place where the
crowd won't be."
We moved over to under the grand stand. That was at half past five
o'clock and it was a long summer's day, but it took till the daylight
was all but gone before I knocked him down for the last time.
[Illustration: It took till the daylight was all but gone before I
knocked him down for the last time.]
He couldn't talk; he couldn't get to his feet. His C.P.O. friend--a
game one, too--shook his fist at me across his body. "Only a week out
of the hospital and you had to beat him up. But, beaten or not
beaten--go ahead, smash me again if you want to, you big brute--he's
still a better man than you are or ever will be!"
A score of people had found their way in under the seats. None who
cared to know but would hear a word of every blow that was passed in
that fight. Going home after the fight it was borne in on me that less
than ever was I the hero I was wishful to make myself out to be.
I slept little that night, and in the morning--nothing within the four
walls of a house suited me any more--I slipped out into the sun and
walked along the docks; and walking the docks I reached the gates to
the navy-yard. I went in.
A ship!--'tis like nothing else in the world. Ships! In the romances
I'd been reading since ever I could read, there had been tales of ships
and of the sea. Phoenician galleys, Roman triremes, the high-prowed
boats of the Vikings, carved Spanish caravels--they had carried the men
who made history. Great ships were they, and yet here were ships that
could take--any one of them here--could take a score, a hundred, of the
ancient craft with all their shielded men at arms and stand off--a
mile, two miles, ten miles off--and with one broadside blow them from
the face of the waters. Dreams of what had been and what might
be--what use were they? Things as they are--that was it!
What most people, maybe, would call common sense was coming to me; and
maybe something finer than all the common sense in the world was flying
from me. So I've often thought since of that morning.
I enlisted in the navy. And it was good for me. To look out on the
wide 'waters--day or night--'tis to calm a man's soul, to widen his
thought.
I had no ambition to rise. The blazing life of the four quarters of
the world was soaking into me. My eyes, perhaps, were seeing too much,
and my mind pondering on what I saw too much, to be breaking any ship
records for efficiency.
But I was getting my rating when it was time and I was forgetting old
shore troubles, when there was a warrant-officer came to our ship. His
name--no matter his name--he's no longer in the navy. He was the--
But you've seen the little man on the big job?--the sure sign of it
being the pompous manner and the arrogant word. There he was, licking
the boots of those above him and setting his own boots on the necks of
those below! He strutted like a governor-general. Maybe you know what
sort of talk is passed along the gun-decks when such a one is parading
by!
The ridiculousness of him was too wide a target for any man with an eye
in his head to miss. I was never short of an eye, nor oil for the
trunnions of my tongue, and no ship's company ever lacked a messenger
to carry the disturbing word. For the fun I poked at him my bold
superior had me spotted for his own target later.
There was a chest of alcohol on the lower flag bridge and there was a
marine sentry standing by it night and day. As much for the devilment
as for the drink, four or five of the lads in our gun crew one night
rushed the ladder to the bridge, stood the sentry on his head, broke
open the chest, grabbed the alcohol, and got away.
My warrant-officer says he saw me among 'em. 'Twas a hot night, like
to-night, and in the tropics too, and he couldn't sleep, he said, and
had to leave his room and come on deck. And so it was he happened to
be where he could see me. He couldn't name the others. Indeed, he
would not care to name others when he was not positive, and so do
possibly innocent men an injustice, and so on. But he was positive
about me.
I was called. The sentry looked me over. He wouldn't swear it was me,
but there was one man in the party about my height and build, and, like
me, he was a very active man, judging by the way he went down the
bridge ladder.
Now, I knew who did it--I had been invited to be of the party, and I
wasn't a bit too good for it; but I didn't feel like going and I didn't
go. The man the sentry took for me was the man who had been the
heavyweight slugger of the ship before I was drafted to her. We had
already had the gloves on, and I had beaten him at a ship's smoker long
before this. I waited to see would he speak up. He didn't, and I took
my sentence--disratement and thirty days in the brig, ten of it on
bread and water.
I didn't mind the disrating, nor the brig and the bread and water; but
I did mind being made out a liar.
The first liberty I made after that--in Hong Kong--I caught my boxing
rival ashore. I gave him a proper beating. He took it as something
coming to him, without complaint. The next liberty I made--in Nagasaki
it was--I caught my warrant-officer ashore.
He was not on duty and so not in uniform, and, pretending to mistake
him for somebody else, I gave him a grand beating. Six or eight of
their little ju-jutsu policemen clung to my legs and back, but that
didn't stop me from finishing my job on him. I left him in such a
ridiculous fix that he was ashamed to complain, but the Japanese
authorities weren't satisfied. I spent a night in one of their jails,
and aboard ship next day I was masted and once more disrated--this time
with a sermon from the captain on my disorderly ways.
I didn't mind the captain's lecture--I had rated that--but I did mind
being drafted to another ship with a record as a disturber. I had not
taken more than four or five drinks in my time up to then, and then
more out of curiosity than desire, but on my next liberty--in Manila--I
took a drink. I didn't like the taste of it--I don't yet--but there's
never any use in half-doing a thing--I took another, and more than
another. From then on I began making liberty records.
Officers were good to me. It is only a skunk of an officer who will
take pride in crowding an enlisted man, and I've met few skunks among
our officers. So long as I could hold my feet coming over the
gang-plank, a friendly shipmate buckled to either side of me and I able
to answer "Here!" to the roll-call--so long as I could do that, there
were deck officers who looked no further. 'Twas a friendly way, but
bringing no cure to me.
By and by Meagher was assigned to our ship. He had married Mary, and
this was maybe a year later. He was a warrant-officer--had been for
five years--a chief gunner, wearing his sword and being called Mister.
And wearing it with credit--all the gun crews spoke well of him.
He never let on that he remembered me, until one day the handling-room
was cleared of all but the two of us, and then it was me who spoke to
him. "I'd like to have a word with you, Mr. Meagher," I said, "if you
don't bear too much of a grudge."
"Why should I bear you a grudge?" he said. "You licked me, and licked
me good. You left no argument as to who won that fight. If I ever
bear you any grudge, it will be for the drinking and brawling record
you're making, with never a thought of the manhood you're wasting."
"It's easy for you to talk so--you that won what I'd die ten times over
to get."
"Die? You die? Give up your life? Why, you haven't even the courage
to give up your consuming pride!"
He looked at me and I at him. I was all but leaping for him. "Go
ahead," he says, "beat me up again!"
"You're my officer," I said.
"Cut the officer stuff!" He threw his cap on the deck. He took off
his coat and threw that on the deck. "Now I bear no mark of the
officer--come on now and beat me up! And you'll have to beat me till I
can't speak or see again--and then you can leave me here, and I'm
telling you now no one will ever know who did it. You're many pounds
heavier and half as strong again as when you licked me before, but go
ahead and turn yourself loose at me. There's no alibi left you now--go
ahead, turn yourself loose at me!"
I was all that he said--a brute that felt equal to ripping the
three-inch planking off the quarterdeck, and he wasn't himself near the
man he had been when I fought him before--he had never got well over
the burning in the handling-room fire; but he stood there telling me
what some one should have told me long before.
"Jack Meagher," I said, "Mary Riley made no mistake--you're a better
man than I am." And I left him and ran up the ladder--up to where
winds were blowing and seas singing and the stars rolling their eternal
circles. All night long I walked the deck.
It did me good--what he had said to me. But a man doesn't change his
ways overnight. I stopped maybe to have a backward look more often
than I used to, and friendly deck officers maybe didn't have so often
to look hard at the liberty lists; but being in the same ship with
Meagher did me good.
I used to take to watching him, to studying his ways--the ways of the
man Mary Riley had married.
He used to come out of the after turret and look out on the sea, when
maybe he'd finished up his work for the afternoon. He was there one
afternoon late; and we were in the China Sea, a division of us, bound
up to Cheefoo for a liberty. A monsoon was blowing, and there we were,
pitching into it, taking plenty of water over ourselves forward, but so
far very little aft.
Meagher was in rain-coat and rubber boots, leaning against a
gypsy-head, when this big sea rolled up over our quarter-deck. She had
a low quarter, our ship, and the solid water of this sea rolled
turret-high. When it had passed on, Meagher and four others were gone.
I was in the lee of the superstructure. I ran onto her quarter-deck.
I saw an officer's cap and took a running high jump over the rail.
While I was still in the air I said to myself: "You're gone! Her
starb'd propeller will get you--you're gone! ...
"And if I am, what of it?" I recalled later saying to myself; but
before my head was fairly under I was kicking out hard from the ship's
side.
Meagher was the only man of the five to come up. When I saw him he was
struggling to unhook the metal clasps of his rain-coat. I reached him
and kicked out for the life-buoy that the marine sentry had heaved
over. We made the buoy and I shoved him up on it--he still trying to
clear himself of his heavy rain-coat.
"I kicked off my rubber boots right away, but the buckles of this thing
they don't come so easy." That was Meagher's first word,
and--heavy-spoken because of weariness--he said it by way of apology
for causing so much trouble. "But I'd never got clear in time--you
saved me from going, that's sure." Not till then did he have a chance
to look at me. When he saw who it was he went quiet.
"You're surprised, Jack Meagher?" I said.
"Yes," he said.
"You doubted my courage, maybe?" I asked.
[Illustration: "You doubted my courage, maybe?" I asked.]
"No," he said to that, "not your courage--never your courage. But your
good intentions--yes."
We were lying with our chests across the buoy, and we could easily see
the ship, and we knew that the ship could see us so long as our buoy
light kept burning--her whistles were blowing regularly to let us know
that. But she would have to have a care in manoeuvring because of the
other ships so near, and it was too rough to lower a boat for us.
Then at last the blue light of our buoy burned itself out, for which we
were almost thankful--it smelled so. And then night came, and darkness.
Tossing high up and then down, like a swing in the sea, we went, lying
on our chests across the buoy one time and hanging on by a grip of our
fingers another time. And when the sea wasn't washing over my head I
would shout; though I doubt if, in the hissing of the sea and the
roaring of the wind, my voice carried ten feet beyond the buoy.
By and by a search-light burned through the dark onto us. Meagher was
by then in tough shape. For the last half-hour I'd been holding him
onto the buoy, and it was another half-hour before they could launch a
boat. We had been three hours in the water, and I was glad to be back
aboard. It is one thing not to mind dying; it is another thing to
fight and fight and have to keep on fighting after your strength is
gone. When a man's strength goes a lot of his courage goes with it.
Meagher's courage was still with him. He protested against being taken
to the sick bay, but there they took him; and when he left the sick
bay, it was to take a ship for home. I went to see him the last day.
On my leaving him, he said: "I'm taking back a lot I said to you. If
you had been washed over I doubt if I'd gone after you."
He would have gone after me--or anybody else. And I told him so, my
heart thumping as I said it, for I'd come to have a great liking for
him.
"I still doubt it," he said. "Anyway, I owe my life--what there is
left of it--to you."
"If you think you owe me anything," I said, "then don't tell your wife
anything about me. Don't tell her where I am or what my name is now."
"I won't tell her or anybody else where you are or what your name is,
but I will tell her how you saved my life."
I never saw him again. I heard they gave him a shore billet when he
was discharged from the hospital; I heard, too, that within a year he
was retired on a pension. But that he was dead--I never knew that till
you told me to-night.
Killorin had come to a full stop.
Carlin recalled the last time he had seen Meagher--when they both knew
he had not long to live. "She has been a wonderful wife to me. Not
much happiness I have had that she has not made for me," Meagher had
said.
"I don't doubt he told her of my going over the side after him in the
gale--he wasn't a man to lie," said Killorin.
"He told her," said Carlin. "And he told me something more. That
night you passed them on the steps he had proposed to her. He thought
she was going to say yes. She had stuck his rose into her hair and was
about to say the word--so he thought--and then you came by. And it was
six years again before she said the word. If you had not left home----"
"Thank God," said Killorin, "I left home! Thank God on her account.
The consuming pride--it had to burn itself out in me."
It was still dark night, but ahead of the ship a cluster of pale yellow
lights could be seen.
"Veracruz?" asked Carlin.
"Veracruz, yes--the port ahead. And how was she when you saw her last?"
"A lonesome woman--more lonesome and weary than a good woman should be
at her age. Her eyes are still violet and her cheeks like ivory, but
the color doesn't come and go in them now."
"I had to leave home to learn," said Killorin, "that the bright color
coming and going like a flood means the blood running high in the
heart. Men should have a care for such. Such natures feel
terribly--either joy or sorrow."
It had been night. In a moment the red sun rose up from the oily sea,
and it was day. There was a moment of haze and vapor, and then emerged
a city ahead--a pink-and-white city, with here and there a touch of
cream and blue.
"Beautiful!" murmured Carlin.
"They're all beautiful," said Killorin, "in the dawn."
A faint breeze was stealing over the Gulf. Through the black sea
little crests of white were breaking--pure white they were, and a whiff
of pure air was coming from them. The sleepers around the deck began
to stir, to roll over, to sit up, and, with thankful sighs, to inhale
the fresh, sweet air.
"The breath o' dawn!" murmured Killorin--"like a breath o' heaven after
the hot tropic night.... As you say, that port ahead is beautiful.
But when that port is astern and some other one ahead! That will be
the sight, man--New York harbor after all these years! The breath and
the color o' dawn then--'twill be like a bride's blush and her whisper
stealing over the waters o' New York Bay."